Director Gustav Machatý provides some stunning visuals in this morally confrontational essay on passion and perfume – read on – and pre-figures the sexual liberation of Ecstasy with Ita Rina his proto-Hedy Lamarr. Ita has the air of a young Joan Crawford and delivers a performance rich in abandon as well as nuance as a young woman spurned then forced to choose between two different types of love.
Erotikon was
showing as part of the Barbican’s Cheap Thrills season, although not cheap it
is a cinematic thrill, as well as the Czech Centre’s 20th Made in
Prague Festival – details here. It has been restored by the Czech National Film Archive.
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| Ita Rina |
Machatý works well with the language of silent film and
this feels like a much stronger vision than Ecstasy.
He hits the ground running: a train pulling away, hard rain falling, a man
running for shelter then spotted by the stationmaster.
The man Georg Sydney (Olaf Fjord), slowly reveals himself
to his rescuer, (Karel Schleichert) who becomes increasingly helpful the more
expensive gifts Georg pulls out of his well-travelled case: a bottle of Scotch
a cigarette lighter. But the appearance of the stationmaster’s daughter Andrea
(Ita Rina) offers Georg something he wants.
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| Georg passes the bottle of Erotikon |
There are some fruity POV shots as Georg admires Andrea
with scarcely concealed lust; the young woman responds with a coy smile but
initially refuses his offer of a bottle of perfume labelled Erotikon… He’s
persistent and she heads off to her room to daub herself with this fragrance
and to being a fitful sleep.
The telephone rings and wakes Andrea up… it’s a false
alarm, the storm perhaps, but it’s the opportunity Georg needs to make his
move. He kisses Andrea’s finger and she dissolves into a blur of hyper-sexualised
movement. The sex scene is as audacious as Ecstasy
and must have pushed the boundaries of good taste. To modern eyes it is
still sizzling and poetically-restrained: whereas Hedy had pearls spilling on
screen, here raindrops intermingle on the window pane to signal love’s labour’s
spent.
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| Erotikon: it does what it says on the label... |
Dawn and the realisation that Georg will not be staying.
Steam engine wheels turn, Andrea waves goodbye cast against the bright, cloudy
sky by a low camera shot and she slumps back home.
How quickly people forget… reads the title card and back
in his world Georg is soon seen carousing with a married blonde Gilda
(Charlotte Susa), whilst Andrea finds herself pregnant and mourning her lost
moments with this doe-eyed sophisticate.
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| Gilda bounces in the background |
Andrea travels to her aunts to give tragic birth to a
still-born baby – she cradles the dead mite in heartbreak as a maid casually
but brutally removes a cot it would have needed. She is out of money though and
is cast out into the cold.
George meanwhile carries on as if there are plenty of tomorrows
although a chance encounter at the tailors has raised the suspicions of his
lover’s husband, the ungainly but well-heeled Hilbert (Theodor Pištek).
Out on the road to nowhere, Andrea is given a lift by a
man who then tries to rape her only to be rescued by Jean (Italian star,
Luigi Serventi), a handsome middle-aged man arriving in an expensive car. In
the ensuing conflagration Jean knocks the assailant out only to be stabbed in
his ribs. He makes it to a hospital where Andrea has to give blood to help save
him – a favour returned and an intimate bond established.
A quick narrative fast forward and we find the couple now
married and in search of a grand piano… and who should also be purchasing a
keyboard but Georg. There’s a shock of recognition, an attempt at repulsion and
the inevitable... complications. A ”dangerous friendship” begins and is
encapsulated perfectly by a game of chess in which Andrea wants Georg to win
even as she sits by her husband’s shoulder…“I
fear you are going to lose your queen” he warns Jean.
But George still has to free himself not only from his
relationship with the dynamic Gilda (Susa has similar energies to Olga
Backlanova) but the obsessive jealousy of her husband: the outcome is far from
clear cut…
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| Not giving up lightly... |
Erotikon’s extensive use of symbolism, drifting focus and
sometimes obscure angles reflected the input of leading avant garde players of
the time including the poet Víteszlav Nezval who co-wrote with Machatý, art
director Alexander Hackenschmied (later Alexander Hammid in the USA) and
cinematographer Václav Vích. At times the use of close up and swirling found
images reminded me of Dimitri Kirsanoff’s Brumes
D’Autumne (1929) who focused as much on his lead Nadia Sibirskaia as
Machatý does on Ita Rina. Both films play with abstract emotionalism to create
a cinematic reverie for the watcher.
The accompaniment from Lydia Kavina on Theremin and
Thomas Ang on piano got off to a cracking start with suitably romantic
intensity from Ang but some found the Theremin more of a challenge as a lead
instrument. Lydia Kavina is a very experienced player having studied with
Theremin himself and she attempted an ambitious duet with the piano often
pushing out complicated lines using just the proximity of hands to electric
field. I’ve never heard the Theremin used to the fore in this way and in spite
of the skill involved it didn’t always match the lush emotionalism on screen
none-the-less it was a bold experiment; one fitting given the film’s artful
ambition.
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| The chess players |
The orchestral score from Jan Klusák on the Czech DVD is
perhaps a better servant to the narrative and features some lovely period
detail and hugely romantic clashing chords. The DVD is available quite cheaply
on eBay or direct – all in Czech – from the Česko-Slovenská filmová databáze.
By showing less and inferring just as much as Ecstasy it is an important example of
vibrant European silent cinema.
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